The worst and best Mother's Day weekend ever.

What do two sick parents, one escape-artist toddler, two teething and feverish infants, zero sleep, and a whole lot of snot equal?  My Mother's Day weekend.

Our weekend began last Thursday, when Jordan came home from work weak and nauseous.  He was still feeling awful on Friday, and needed to take a sick day.  In my naivety, I excitedly thought, "Yay!  It'll be like a three-day weekend, having Jordan home for an extra day."  Sure, Jordan was sick, but he's usually not down for long, and I would have an extra pair of hands to help with the kids. Well, my "extra pair of hands" was down for the count, along with the rest of his body, and what he needed was to rest and be nursed back to health.  Poor guy.  We both soon realized that I am the worst nurse in the entire known world.  Instead of sympathetically leaving him to rest in peace, I continually checked on his progress, sighing loudly when he said he still felt the same, and making it very clear (although never saying it out loud...oh wait...no, I did say it out loud) that his illness was incredibly inconvenient for me.

I began to feel guilty for my selfishness, and in an effort to make it up to Jordan, I offered to be on "baby duty" Thursday and Friday night.  If the babies cried and needed to be soothed, I would deal with it, and let him sleep.  Usually this would not be a huge deal, as they are typically pretty good sleepers.  Of course, Thursday night happened to be the worst the babies have slept since they were newborns.  They were up constantly, waking up out of a dead sleep, crying in a way that could only mean they were teething.  On top of teething, Nora and I both developed a head cold, which led to Friday night, when she couldn't breathe and woke up even more often (several times an hour).  I was so wired from being up so often that I just laid awake in bed, waiting for the next cry.

On Saturday morning, I didn't even feel like a human.  In my exhaustion, I pathetically sent out a cry for help on Facebook.  I asked for prayer, because I wasn't sure how we were going to make it through the day.  I was so envious of those lucky moms who have their own mothers or mothers-in-law living nearby who can come over and scoop up the kids so that they can rest after a rough night.  But here is where my story starts to turn around: within five minutes of my cliche Facebook plea, I received three offers from dear friends who offered to come take the kids so Jordan and I could nap.  People offered to bring coffee, to take Asher for the entire day, to watch, feed, and care for the cranky babies.  I received so many offers to help that I had to turn people down!

Until this season of my life I have subconsciously lived by the philosophy that people should help themselves whenever possible, and that it's kind of shameful to ask for help.  Well, moving to a new city where we knew nobody and had three tiny kids shattered that philosophy.  I have been forced to realize that we (human beings) are not meant to do life alone, and that when God seemingly takes us away from family, he always provides new "family" to step in and hold us up in our weak moments.

I could stop writing here, and neatly tie up this post with the moral of the last paragraph.  However, my weekend didn't end there.  The madness continued, because God had more to teach me.

Sunday was Mother's Day.  Although Saturday night had still been rough, we had scraped together some sleep, and we felt better due to our childless and restful afternoon the day before.  Our son Asher had been acting exceptionally hyper, probably because he was the only one who wasn't sick, and he couldn't figure out why everyone just wanted to sleep instead of play with him.  He couldn't seem to calm his body down.  He needed to run everywhere, and all he wanted to do was "play rough" with somebody.  Sunday afternoon we went to the grocery store.   This particular store provides childcare while parents are shopping, and we had just checked Asher out from the play room after paying for our groceries.  As Jordan and I were chatting with the childcare worker, Asher started wandering away.  In the back of my mind, I knew he had drifted a few feet away, but I continued to chat, believing that I was also keeping track of Asher with a portion of my brain.  The problem is, my sleepless brain was dulled to the point of not being able to multi-task.  Suddenly, Jordan said, "I really should go get Asher," and I saw that he had wandered pretty far down the aisle from us.  At that moment, Asher turned around, saw Jordan coming after him, and all of his restless energy from the weekend climaxed into one disastrous decision: he began running as fast as he could, giggling as though this was the wild game of chase he'd been longing for.  He turned a corner and was temporarily out of sight, but I wasn't too worried.  I assumed Jordan would easily grab Asher, never imagining that our normally cautious child would recklessly race out the store's entrance and INTO THE PARKING LOT by himself.  As I turned the corner with our full shopping cart and came into view of the entrance, I saw that people had frozen and were all turned toward a commotion in the parking lot.  A child - my child - was careening at a wild pace away from his father, who was running after him as best as he could while simultaneously pushing a double-stroller with two infants in it (and simultaneously fighting off a wave of nausea, although no one else knew that).  Asher made it past the area right outside the entrance where cars were driving, crossed that driveway and kept running past all the parked cars, and had almost entered the area beyond the parking spaces where more cars were driving, when Jordan finally caught up to him.

I can't describe the horror I felt in that moment, but those of you who are also parents can either relate to or imagine what I went through.  I felt like a terrible parent; I felt angry, relieved, terrified, shocked.  My exhausted brain scrambled to come up with a way to discipline Asher in a way that he would remember to never, ever, do anything like that again.

As I fell into bed Sunday night, sights and sounds from the weekend began flashing through my head.  At first, the horrific moments were at the forefront: the sights of Jordan's weak body laying on the couch, of Nora's feverish, miserable face as I picked her up for the tenth time in the middle of the night, of the back-side of Asher running into a busy parking lot, and the seemingly endless sound of crying babies.  But gradually, other moments began to surface: the sight of caring friends at our door, picking up our kids to give us a break Saturday afternoon, the taste of the soup our pastors made us for dinner that night, the sound of yet another text message coming through with someone checking to see how we were doing or how they could help, the feel of Nora's sweet, warm head resting on my shoulder when she became too exhausted to fight sleep anymore, the tears that Asher and I shed together after he was disciplined for running away, the countless surges of love I felt as I looked at my husband and thanked God for a man who selflessly loves me and his children even when he's at his weakest.  As these moments rose above and surpassed the terrible moments, a revelation sank deep into my spirit: desperation creates intimacy.

In my desperation for rest, I was forced to ask for help, and friendships and relationships deepened as a result.  In our desperation to protect Asher and keep him safe, what could have been an ugly moment turned into a sweet time of praying, crying, (yes, spanking), and holding each other closely.  Nora's desperation for sleep yielded a rare time of cuddling with me that I would NEVER have gotten otherwise (not because she's a twin, but because she is so busy and independent that she never stops moving long enough to be held or cuddled).  I realized that I had felt God's closeness, and encountered his love more directly during this weekend than I had in a long, long time.  I had felt closer to my husband, and cherished him more deeply this weekend than I had in a long time.  Desperation creates intimacy.

Numerous times during the weekend, I had bitterly thought to myself how this must be the worst, most exhausting Mother's Day ever.  But I had done my math wrong.  Two sick parents, one escape-artist toddler, two teething and feverish infants, zero sleep, and a whole lot of snot do NOT equal the worst Mother's Day ever.  They equal one of the best I think I will ever have.